2011

(Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 24, 2011) KAMPALA, UGANDA — It’s late at night at the Ugandan-Kenyan border and a little Ugandan boy is about to disappear forever. Moses Kaloulou, all of seven years old, is crying hysterically. Not that he knows what’s going to happen, that he’ll likely soon die at the hands, and knife blade, of a witch doctor. All he knows is that it’s late — about midnight now — and very dark, and that some hours ago he was taken by strange men.

So it is Christmas, a good time to give thanks for the past year, especially for our children.

(Christian Week – December 2011) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Remember Kienan Hebert, the three-year-old in one of Canada’s biggest feel-good stories of 2011? Kienan was abducted from his B.C. home and later returned by, of all people, his abductor. Twitter and Facebook lit up. Christians proclaimed God is alive and well and listening to prayer. One wrote the Toronto Star online: “To those who aren’t aware that God answers prayer, I show you the return of Kienan Hebert. Now if we prayed on an ongoing basis for the protection of children and for those disturbed in mind and spirit, abductions like this would rarely occur.”

If you drive away one good student or one good faculty or one good missionary today, how many will come tomorrow?

Government education is a sham but top students are heroes.

There are various things horribly wrong in blaming Mbale health workers for the much-publicised maternal death of Cecilia Nambooze.

Yes, it can be tricky for a Christian to navigate a mainstream newsroom. And it can be tricky for a serious journalist to always fit in with imperfect faith communities.

Old age is not for wimps. We approach it, even from a distance, with trepidation. It’s like your second childhood.

Hamilton’s Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese was invited to speak at a venerable institution.

Technology tempts us, lures us, hooks us. And too often, we’re the poorer for it.

Continents apart, generations and circumstance between them, hands always tell the stories.

As the country’s president seems about to topple, a writer remembers times of living dangerously.

Kaitlin Boyda could have had something for herself, but she donated her wish instead.

I'm about to get up and move through my day. What choice do any of us have? I guess that’s what bothers me more than anything. I too may be dead before nightfall.

The revolutionary spirit sweeping North Africa isn’t coming to Black Africa — yet.